Why Did 3,000 Chickens Cross The Road?

To thousands of Scottish motorists, it appeared to be a mass re-enaction of an old joke. On the A80, Scotland’s main north-south artery, thousands of chickens were crossing the road.

For the chickens, it was much more serious. At 4.30am 3,000 of the birds were being transported from farm to slaughterhouse when the lorry carrying them overturned.

The driver sustained serious back injuries, four hundred birds died in the impact – or later from their injuries – but as dawn broke and the lorry lay on its side, thousands of chickens escaped from their crates and swarmed on to the road. Some sat on the verge, others took to the bushes, hundreds more milled around and pecked at the road and seemed uncertain what to make of their new-found freedom.

It took the police and specialist chicken handlers nine hours to round up the birds.